


Feel It In My Fingers

by snowshus



Category: DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Canon amnesia, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:01:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22475263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowshus/pseuds/snowshus
Summary: Someone is sitting on the roof of Ric's apartment building
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne
Comments: 10
Kudos: 142
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Feel It In My Fingers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Redrikki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redrikki/gifts).



There is someone on the roof of his apartment building. Ric can see the hunched figure through the haze of misty rain. They’re not exactly hiding but they’re half blended anyways, like it’s second nature to find the spot hardest to see. The same way it’s second nature for Ric to search those spots out. It means the figure must be one of the old cape crowd: his so-called family. He hasn’t seen them around since the Red Head promised to leave him alone. It seems it was too much to hope for her to keep her word.

Ric contemplates just turning around, going to spend the night in his cab or at Bea’s. These people are persistent though, he’d just be delaying the inevitable. He may as well disappoint them now and get it over with. He hears he used to swing from the roofs on grappling hooks like Tarzan through a concrete jungle. He doesn’t do that anymore. He’d torched his grabbling hooks with the rest of it. It limits him now, but he had honestly meant to be done with this superheroing bullshit forever at the time. One too many times getting shot in the head and it finally knocked some sense into him, it just had to knock everything else out first.

He jumps the smaller of the alleys and swings up fire escapes, using the momentum to get him across the bigger gaps until he’s on his building with the hooded figure.

“You know there’s a nice dry coffee shop down the road you could have been enjoying instead of waiting up here just to be disappointed.” He says to announces his presence.

“Tt,” the figure clicks their tongue, not moving. 

Ric doesn’t recognize them: it’s not the girl or the old butler. Sulking on roof tops didn’t really seem like the old butler’s style, honestly. The figure is too small to be the rich man, though Ric isn’t sure if he’d recognize him even if it was. The red head and butler had kept coming around for awhile but the rich man had given in to Ric’s request for distance easily. This person must be one of the “brothers.” He forgets how many there are, more than just the one he’d met when he’d first woken up. He’d only seen the kid once or twice early on then he’d seemed to disappear - not Ric’s problem.

“Look, Kid, just tell me why you’re here so I can tell you no and we can both get out this rain.”

“This isn’t rain,” the boy scoffs.

“It’s close enough.” Ric folds his arms. “Well?”

“Well, what? I’m not here for you, so go on-enjoy your dry coffee shop.” The kid waves his hand dismissing Ric from the roof.

“I’m supposed to believe you’re just waiting on my roof in the rain by some coincidence. You can tell your dad or the butler or whoever sent you, I’m not the person they remember and I’m not a part of their weird family.” Ric circles round coming to confront the kid and stops. God he looks young. Ric had thought he’d been a teenager, but he doesn’t look older than thirteen maybe. His lips are pressed into a thin tight line, clentched between teeth and his eyes are focused intently at the brick ledge despite his constant blinking away the rain misting across his face and fuck, he made the kid cry. 

It was easy to say he didn’t care about these strangers who claimed to know him when they were these calm, collected grown up people. They insisted they loved him and he was supposed to love them too. They were all so put together it was easy to assume they’d be fine. They’d get over him. He had to look out for himself. He couldn’t walk around being a ghost of someone else. He couldn’t live like that. 

It’s harder to say ‘I don’t love you’ to a kid trying to hold back tears. 

“You can tell him yourself. I’m not talking to Father right now,” the kid spits out.

“I’m sorry.” Ric sits down in front of him, the damp ground soaks into his pants. “Why don’t I call someone, okay, to come get you? Anyone you want.” 

The kid doesn’t say anything for a minute before mumbling something into his drawn up knees. 

“What was that?”

“I don’t know where else to go,” he says more clearly, turning away.

“Oh.” Ric looks down at the roof between them. “Do you want to come inside?”

The kid shrugs. Ric doesn’t actually remember being a teenager but he’s pretty sure that’s teenage speak for yes. He stands up and the kid follows him down the fire escape and into the small living room. Ric grabs a towel and a big sweatshirt to give to the kid and changes into pajamas, hanging his dark working clothes over the shower curtain to dry along with the kids red hooded sweatshirt and damp jeans. 

“Do you want water or something?” he asks, opening his cabinets seeing if he has anything kid friendly to drink. 

“Coffee, black,” the kid requests.

“It’s after midnight,” Ric protests.

“So?”

“How about hot chocolate?” Ric asks, pulling a box from the back of the top cabinet.

“Tt” The kid does that tongue click thing again but doesn’t protest so Ric makes him a mug.

“Now,” Ric sits down on the coffee table in front of the kid, handing him the drink. “Why did you come here?” 

The kid shrugs and takes a sip of the hot chocolate and avoids Ric’s eyes. 

“Kid,” Ric starts to ask again.

“You don’t remember my name.” The kid says suddenly. “You keep calling me Kid, because you don’t remember my name.” He puts the mug still full of hot chocolate down. “I need to go.”

“No, wait.” Ric reaches out grabbing the kid’s arm before he can get far. “Do you need help?”

The kid stares down at his arm in Ric’s hand. “I made a mistake. It was a temporary lapse of judgement. It won’t happen again.”

“Kid,” Ric starts again, worried suddenly. He’s so young, how can they justify letting someone so young do what they do. 

“Damian. My name is Damian, you used to call me little D.” The kid-Damian corrects, his lips tremble. 

“Damian, what happened? Why did you come here?”

“I made a mistake. I wasn’t-I didn’t mean for you to find me. I keep messing up and everything is going wrong and I misjudged a situation and I know I’m not supposed to come here because we’re supposed to be leaving you alone but I just-” Damian snaps his mouth shut cutting off what he was about to say. He deftly twists his arm free of Ric’s grasp and steps towards the window. 

It is instinct that carries him, pure unthinking instinct. It’s like when he fights. He doesn’t remember how he knows what to do, his body just moves. Damian is in his arms, stiff but not resisting as Ric pulls him close. His arms know exactly where to go to hug this kid. He doesn’t remember any of them, he feels no connection. He can’t remember if he ever kissed the Red Head, or held the Butler’s hand, or hugged the Rich Man. He can’t remember loving them. He doesn’t remember Damian either. He doesn’t remember who he is or why out of all the family and friends he must have he’d come here. It’s not different than the others. But he knows he loves him. He can feel it in his muscles, in his bones. 

“I used to come to you when I didn’t know what to do.” Damian says to his shoulder. “You’d say something trite and ridiculous and stupi and unhelpful and it would fix nothing, but it made it better anyways.”

“I’m sorry,” Ric says, not sure what he’s apologizing for besides existing. “Come back to the couch, drink your hot chocolate and sleep here. You’ll feel better in the morning. Is that trite enough?”

“Not even close.” Damian snorts derisively but lets Ric pull him back to the couch. He’s still there in the morning, curled under an afgan Bea had left last time she was over. Ric pauses on his way to the kitchen to brush back the one curl of hair that always falls forward on Damian’s forehead without thinking about it, as though he’s done this exact thing a million times before. He had thought the person who did this to him had taken everything. He had become a stranger to himself and everything he was supposed to care about felt empty. All he had left was this violence carved into his muscles deeper than memory. For the first time it feels like maybe something else is left. He doesn’t remember loving this kid, but his hands do. That love he had for someone, and some had for him, it lingers on encoded in his bones too deep to be exhumed by anyone. 


End file.
